As the hoarfrost settles across your eyebrows and icy stalactites form from your nostrils, warm yourself with the light of a log fire in your terminal, or embrace the weather with a CLI rainstorm.
Why Would You Want a Roaring Fire in Your Terminal?
Even wizened old terminal dwellers occasionally like to get into the Christmas spirit. Even if you’re not religious, you can cheer up a cold room with the virtual cracking wood and the heat emanating from your laboring CPU fans as you compile another project in a different terminal.
If you’ve guests to join you in a sing-along to royalty-free Christmas music, while you pass around your tech-themed secret Santa gifts, there’s no better background than a retro log fire to get everyone in the spirit.
And suppose your Scrooge-like nature and repeated calls to RTFM mean that no one comes to your party, or you end up with a truly horrible Microsoft Christmas sweater. In that case, your terminal can console you with suitably maudlin animations of raindrops falling in a puddle.
Install Fireplace and Puddle on Linux
Fireplace and Puddle both require ncurses to run. To install ncurses on Debian or a derivative distro:
To install ncurses on a Red Hat-related distribution:
For Fedora (22+):
ncurses is also available in the Arch User Repository (AUR).
You can now clone the GitHub repo for Fireplace:
Once the operation is complete, move into the new directory with:
Then, compile Fireplace by running:
If you want to be able to run Fireplace from any location, you should also run:
The procedure for Puddle is virtually identical. First clone the Puddle repository:
Then, move into the new directory:
…and compile Puddle with:
Use Fireplace and Puddle to Set the Mood for the Festive Season!
Just as throwing a new log on a real fire will change the way it moves and alter the height of the flames from a feeble glow to a towering inferno, you can adjust the properties of your virtual fire by adding some arguments.
By default, Fireplace uses the “@” character to make its flames dance. You can specify the character of your choice using the -c switch. For instance:
…will result in a roaring fire composed entirely of the letter F.
Unfortunately, Fireplace does not render Unicode characters, so we could not create a furnace composed of Christmas trees, snowmen, or snowflakes.
You can set the maximum temperature of the flames with the -t switch. The default value is 10, and a higher value will give taller flames.
Douse the flames at any time with the q key.
Puddle comes with a few more configuration options, and you can use -p to set the color options to either 0 for monochrome or 1 to suit your mood.
You can change the behavior of the virtual water, too. -d sets the damping factor, with a smaller damping factor meaning that ripples die out faster. -i determines the rainfall intensity. Higher intensity means more raindrops per second.
We found that the following command creates an especially pleasing and slightly hypnotic effect:
Have Yourself a Happy Terminal-Based Christmas This Year
Christmas isn’t just about giving gifts, spending time with family, and showing off cool command-line tricks in your Linux terminal. For a truly great festive atmosphere, you need to get your neighbors supping the Christmas spirit, too. Why not light up the outside of your house with a Christmas-themed projector display?
